Last year’s Food and Drug Administration Amendments Act gave the FDA increased authority to require Risk Evaluation and Mitigation Strategies (REMS)— safety plans similar to those previously known as Risk Minimization Action Plans (RiskMAP). A recent article in Corporate Counsel offers in-house counsel a note of caution concerning the relationship between REMS and the claims made in a typical personal injury or consumer fraud litigation.

For example, the authors note that if REMS are needed, identifying and implementing the appropriate measures will involve a substantial amount of internal work by the manufacturer as well as significant interaction with the FDA. Both include opportunities and pitfalls that could have a significant effect on future litigation involving the product. The REMS process may engender “bad documents” (a paper trail that casts the company or its products in a bad light). On the other hand, one of the common claims asserted in product litigation is that a manufacturer was aware of and failed to adequately warn about its product’s risk. As the REMS process is specifically designed to increase the warnings to the health care  and patient communities, the authors (full disclosure: colleagues of MassTortDefense) suggest it may constitute a solid defense against the assertion that the manufacturer failed to provide adequate warnings.